I noticed it was probably Will right away, but I don’t really see the problem. It’s a reasonable post and he could make (and probably has) non-obvious sockpuppets if we wanted to. You can’t credibly threaten to ban non-obvious sockpuppets so why ban the ones that at least let us know who it really is? So long as the sock-puppets behave themselves why does it matter?
If people think the thread is a good idea upvote/participate. If they don’t, don’t. Whether or not the sockpuppet Will uses is obvious or non-obvious shouldn’t make a difference.
The use of sockpuppets doesn’t seem problematic to me unless they’re being used to bolster support for something the true-user has a vested interest it. I.e. if someone with some responsibility did something wrong and they invent a sockpuppet to defend themselves. But they seem really unproblematic when they’re obviously sockpuppets.
You can’t credibly threaten to ban non-obvious sockpuppets so why ban the ones that at least let us know who it really is? So long as the sock-puppets behave themselves why does it matter?
Will initially threatened to create his sock-puppets for the purpose of attempting to do damage to lesswrong if Alicorn did not submit to his will when she considered intervening in a different thread. He has now created these sockpuppets and they are all mild nuisances. The appropriate response to that sort of overt anti-social behavior is banning—a ban that could be removed as soon as he agreed to stop violating what is either a clear norm of the community or an outright violation of the terms of use of the site (I’m not sure if lesswrong has one of those and if it does I haven’t read it). Using multiple accounts is (with few exceptions) not-OK, particularly given how easy that makes it to abuse the karma system.
Banning Will (for as long as he blatantly defies the rules) can not prevent him from posting anonymously or vandalizing the site but it does change him from an accepted member of the community to outsider/vandal/troll/spammer. His posts can then be treated the same way the accounts with names like v234lkhj2lhksdfsdflh334 that come to post about pandora necklaces get treated. They barely get noticed and cause no disruption.
If Will manages to create a sockpuppet that is not recognized and doesn’t cause any disruptions or cause frequent universal downvoting based on the perceived (lack of) merit of the comments by that account then fantastic. We’ve been “tricked” into accepting drastically improved contributions.
I’ve asked Will about a sockpuppet of his before and he said he used it to get feedback for an idea without having to deal with the negative reaction to it being his idea.
(I do this only very rarely, and even then I didn’t aim for complete anonymity, just a buffer against knee-jerk reactions.)
I suppose there is the chance Will is building an armada of sockpuppets for abusing the karma system,
Agh that would be so lame. Also clearly immoral.
he’s being rather obvious about this one
Someone is either making it seem as if I am being obvious about it, in which case they are clever, or did not anticipate the consequences of choosing a name that rhymes with mine after I threatened to do that if I were banned, in which case they aren’t clever and have a very strange way of thinking. Given what I’ve seen of Thrill_Shoesome &c. I’ve found it suspiciously difficult to discern which hypothesis is more likely.
Someone is either making it seem as if I am being obvious about it, in which case they are clever, or did not anticipate the consequences of choosing a name that rhymes with mine after I threatened to do that if I were banned, in which case they aren’t clever and have a very strange way of thinking. Given what I’ve seen of Thrill_Shoesome &c. I’ve found it suspiciously difficult to discern which hypothesis is more likely.
Incidentally, sockpuppets that by strong implication are impersonations of another user are at a whole different level of “BAN! BAN NOW!!!”
(I do this only very rarely, and even then I didn’t aim for complete anonymity, just a buffer against knee-jerk reactions.)
Which I’m fine with.
Agh that would be so lame. Also clearly immoral.
Lame, yes. Possibly immoral, I don’t have a good sense for how much you would care about undermining the Less Wrong karma system. People here tend to be too worried about the integrity of the karma system. It is much more robust than people realize because it is really just a stand-in approximation for actual reputation which is why actual cases of karmassination have been quickly remedied when the user was in good-standing. I’m more worried about the site overreacting to threats than any of the suggested threats so far.
Someone is either making it seem as if I am being obvious about it, in which case they are clever, or did not anticipate the consequences of choosing a name that rhymes with mine after I threatened to do that if I were banned, in which case they aren’t clever and have a very strange way of thinking.
Either way it sounds reasonable to ban the account.
-a ban that could be removed as soon as he agreed to stop violating what is either a clear norm of the community or an outright violation of the terms of use of the site [..] Banning Will (for as long as he blatantly defies the rules
Emphasis mine. The way you phrase this suggests that the Will_Newsome account is admitting to running the similarly named accounts. Do you mean to suggest this, or merely that it should nevertheless be obvious that he’s doing so?
As far as I can recall, he has made no explicit claim either way, though he has made various statements that seem clearly intended to imply that he’s not responsible for them.
That’s not to say that he can’t be banned for them anyway, if enough people feel there’s enough evidence. I just want to be clear about what’s being claimed.
He has now created these sockpuppets and they are all mild nuisances.
How could you possibly think jumping to that conclusion is justified? I can’t tell if you’re really that bad at epistemic rationality (maybe just in this domain? or maybe you’re in a weird mood?) or if you’re really that intent on getting me banned even if it requires underhanded tactics.
How could you possibly think jumping to that conclusion is justified? I can’t tell if you’re really that bad at epistemic rationality (maybe just in this domain? or maybe you’re in a weird mood?)
They are definitely mild nuisances. I mean, have you seen them? They jump in and say stupid things. Ban them all.
Your denial counts for something. Not enough that I would assign less than 0.5 probability to them being you but enough that ‘benefit of the doubt’ applies. At the very least you have distanced yourself from the behavior of the others. Of course if credible evidence (including the testimony of sufficient others) indicated that you were lying about them not being you I’d endorse an unconditional permanent ban.
or if you’re really that intent on getting me banned even if it requires underhanded tactics.
The frequent inclusion of conditionals and caveats would indicate otherwise and I wouldn’t consider my approach here particularly underhanded even if I did have that as a goal. No, this isn’t personal—it really is about a preference for enforcement of a sock-puppet abuse policy. “Clippy” is actually on my “Do Not Feed” list due to sockpuppet abuse considerations—in particular, dishonesty regarding the use and being consistently not funny in the role. I now get hatemail from him. Literally, it says “i hate you” in the body and the subject.
How did you manage to reach this state by non feeding him, by the way?
He wasn’t always on said list. Even if he was “non-feeding” does not always mean not taking actions against. For example if I wrote “Do Not Feed” as a response to all other users who replied to given user then that wouldn’t be feeding but it would be extremely hostile. (This is hypothetical only.)
I’ve been accused of being Clippy before, by the way.
Ridiculous. You are too creative and intelligent to be Clippy but not quite creative and intelligent enough that you could pull off being that mediocre for that long. You’d have made a far better Clippy if that was a game you had felt like playing.
We should punish even obvious sockpuppets for slippery-slope reasons. Any sockpuppet, obvious or not, accepted by the community will be interpreted by someone as a signal that there’s nothing wrong with sockpuppetry.
Also, I have a moderate to strong distaste for bizarre behaviour, such as creating obvious sockpuppets when there is no obvious reason. Absurdist fiction is not my favourite genre.
But they seem really unproblematic when they’re obviously sockpuppets.
Fill_Cluesome &c. aren’t obviously sockpuppets. Could be a user who happened to be inspired to make an account after reading one of my posts. In that case I don’t think “sockpuppet” would be the right term… no?
Also I think you and wedrifid are absurd to think that I’m responsible for the accounts—that said, this sort of prediction problem seems like it’d be really difficult to formalize, so I don’t have much basis for that intuition.
If you deny that they’re you that seems like an excellent reason to ban them.
Edit: Regarding my belief that you’re responsible for the accounts. I 1) Know you’ve used other account names and 2) didn’t care that they could be linked to you. I assumed you were just using it to avoid the instant downvoting that your main account has dealt with in the past. I was not attributing their use to any kind of malice or conspiracy. My prior for someone else creating the account to follow you around with lame agreement and repost your old ideas in order to further sour opinion toward you (or do a really poor job of the opposite) is very low.
My prior for someone else creating the account to follow you around with lame agreement and repost your old ideas in order to further sour opinion toward you (or do a really poor job of the opposite) is very low.
Once you’ve seen the kinds of things I have the tails of your distributions start to get pretty thick.
I noticed it was probably Will right away, but I don’t really see the problem. It’s a reasonable post and he could make (and probably has) non-obvious sockpuppets if we wanted to. You can’t credibly threaten to ban non-obvious sockpuppets so why ban the ones that at least let us know who it really is? So long as the sock-puppets behave themselves why does it matter?
If people think the thread is a good idea upvote/participate. If they don’t, don’t. Whether or not the sockpuppet Will uses is obvious or non-obvious shouldn’t make a difference.
The use of sockpuppets doesn’t seem problematic to me unless they’re being used to bolster support for something the true-user has a vested interest it. I.e. if someone with some responsibility did something wrong and they invent a sockpuppet to defend themselves. But they seem really unproblematic when they’re obviously sockpuppets.
Will initially threatened to create his sock-puppets for the purpose of attempting to do damage to lesswrong if Alicorn did not submit to his will when she considered intervening in a different thread. He has now created these sockpuppets and they are all mild nuisances. The appropriate response to that sort of overt anti-social behavior is banning—a ban that could be removed as soon as he agreed to stop violating what is either a clear norm of the community or an outright violation of the terms of use of the site (I’m not sure if lesswrong has one of those and if it does I haven’t read it). Using multiple accounts is (with few exceptions) not-OK, particularly given how easy that makes it to abuse the karma system.
Banning Will (for as long as he blatantly defies the rules) can not prevent him from posting anonymously or vandalizing the site but it does change him from an accepted member of the community to outsider/vandal/troll/spammer. His posts can then be treated the same way the accounts with names like v234lkhj2lhksdfsdflh334 that come to post about pandora necklaces get treated. They barely get noticed and cause no disruption.
If Will manages to create a sockpuppet that is not recognized and doesn’t cause any disruptions or cause frequent universal downvoting based on the perceived (lack of) merit of the comments by that account then fantastic. We’ve been “tricked” into accepting drastically improved contributions.
http://xkcd.com/810/ ?
Edit: I’m just going to drop it since a new thread had already been created.
(I do this only very rarely, and even then I didn’t aim for complete anonymity, just a buffer against knee-jerk reactions.)
Agh that would be so lame. Also clearly immoral.
Someone is either making it seem as if I am being obvious about it, in which case they are clever, or did not anticipate the consequences of choosing a name that rhymes with mine after I threatened to do that if I were banned, in which case they aren’t clever and have a very strange way of thinking. Given what I’ve seen of Thrill_Shoesome &c. I’ve found it suspiciously difficult to discern which hypothesis is more likely.
Incidentally, sockpuppets that by strong implication are impersonations of another user are at a whole different level of “BAN! BAN NOW!!!”
Which I’m fine with.
Lame, yes. Possibly immoral, I don’t have a good sense for how much you would care about undermining the Less Wrong karma system. People here tend to be too worried about the integrity of the karma system. It is much more robust than people realize because it is really just a stand-in approximation for actual reputation which is why actual cases of karmassination have been quickly remedied when the user was in good-standing. I’m more worried about the site overreacting to threats than any of the suggested threats so far.
Either way it sounds reasonable to ban the account.
Emphasis mine.
The way you phrase this suggests that the Will_Newsome account is admitting to running the similarly named accounts.
Do you mean to suggest this, or merely that it should nevertheless be obvious that he’s doing so?
As far as I can recall, he has made no explicit claim either way, though he has made various statements that seem clearly intended to imply that he’s not responsible for them.
That’s not to say that he can’t be banned for them anyway, if enough people feel there’s enough evidence. I just want to be clear about what’s being claimed.
see.
How could you possibly think jumping to that conclusion is justified? I can’t tell if you’re really that bad at epistemic rationality (maybe just in this domain? or maybe you’re in a weird mood?) or if you’re really that intent on getting me banned even if it requires underhanded tactics.
They are definitely mild nuisances. I mean, have you seen them? They jump in and say stupid things. Ban them all.
Your denial counts for something. Not enough that I would assign less than 0.5 probability to them being you but enough that ‘benefit of the doubt’ applies. At the very least you have distanced yourself from the behavior of the others. Of course if credible evidence (including the testimony of sufficient others) indicated that you were lying about them not being you I’d endorse an unconditional permanent ban.
The frequent inclusion of conditionals and caveats would indicate otherwise and I wouldn’t consider my approach here particularly underhanded even if I did have that as a goal. No, this isn’t personal—it really is about a preference for enforcement of a sock-puppet abuse policy. “Clippy” is actually on my “Do Not Feed” list due to sockpuppet abuse considerations—in particular, dishonesty regarding the use and being consistently not funny in the role. I now get hatemail from him. Literally, it says “i hate you” in the body and the subject.
This is hilarious.
(How did you manage to reach this state by non feeding him, by the way?)
He wasn’t always on said list. Even if he was “non-feeding” does not always mean not taking actions against. For example if I wrote “Do Not Feed” as a response to all other users who replied to given user then that wouldn’t be feeding but it would be extremely hostile. (This is hypothetical only.)
Still think this is way too high, but whatever, too hard to consider the counterfactual.
I haven’t been annoyed so much as puzzled. I feel like Harry right before he realizes that Snape doesn’t make sense.
I dunno dude. I don’t see a caveat in “Ban the sockpuppets. And Will.” But whatever, as long as you’re chill now.
Lol. Strange. (I’ve been accused of being Clippy before, by the way. Also, as you might remember, AspiringKnitter. It’s sorta getting old by now.)
We could try to compensate by starting the rumor that you aren’t really Will Newsome, I suppose.
I am Will Newsome!
Ridiculous. You are too creative and intelligent to be Clippy but not quite creative and intelligent enough that you could pull off being that mediocre for that long. You’d have made a far better Clippy if that was a game you had felt like playing.
Because, among other things, giving karma to sockpuppets allows them to create networks that can karmassassinate people.
We should punish even obvious sockpuppets for slippery-slope reasons. Any sockpuppet, obvious or not, accepted by the community will be interpreted by someone as a signal that there’s nothing wrong with sockpuppetry.
Also, I have a moderate to strong distaste for bizarre behaviour, such as creating obvious sockpuppets when there is no obvious reason. Absurdist fiction is not my favourite genre.
In fact from a slippery-slope/community norm point of view obvious sockpuppets are worse than non-obvious ones.
Fill_Cluesome &c. aren’t obviously sockpuppets. Could be a user who happened to be inspired to make an account after reading one of my posts. In that case I don’t think “sockpuppet” would be the right term… no?
Also I think you and wedrifid are absurd to think that I’m responsible for the accounts—that said, this sort of prediction problem seems like it’d be really difficult to formalize, so I don’t have much basis for that intuition.
If you deny that they’re you that seems like an excellent reason to ban them.
Edit: Regarding my belief that you’re responsible for the accounts. I 1) Know you’ve used other account names and 2) didn’t care that they could be linked to you. I assumed you were just using it to avoid the instant downvoting that your main account has dealt with in the past. I was not attributing their use to any kind of malice or conspiracy. My prior for someone else creating the account to follow you around with lame agreement and repost your old ideas in order to further sour opinion toward you (or do a really poor job of the opposite) is very low.
wedrifid feels similarly. I’m not so sure. This strikes me as parody, or maybe imitation, but not impersonation.
Once you’ve seen the kinds of things I have the tails of your distributions start to get pretty thick.